All our work is internal. How can we manifest it? Only outwardly. Naturally, organizing our inner work requires certain external actions. After all, gathering a large group demands effort in this world.

We deliberately seek opportunities to spend more time together, unite further, to discover shared activities, and express what each of us has inside outwardly. We need some form, some foundation, some material for communication with one another.

That is why we need this tent (the Sukkah) with all its symbolic features: a roof symbolizing the screen (Masach), above which is the upper light entering through the gaps. All this symbolism corresponds to the upper world. But in principle, the same thing would exist without a Sukkah.

We use various external attributes in order to connect with one another. Since we do this together, investing joint efforts, we thereby create the foundation upon which we build the common Kli. We do this solely to create unity, adhesion, and connection among us, beginning at the lowest, animal level, and continuing upward.

If there is anything holy or sublime here, anything directed toward the Creator, it is because we have invested our desires in it. We do this not in order to build a beautiful Sukkah, but in order to generate the necessary collective effort and infuse it with our own desires and aspirations.

We want our aspiration toward the upper one to become revealed ultimately and to evoke a powerful surrounding light. Otherwise, there is no holiness in it.

Even the Temple in Jerusalem was immediately destroyed as soon as the disciples of Rabbi Akiva began to hate one another. Rabbi Akiva said, “Love your neighbor as yourself”; this is a fundamental law. But suddenly, egoism flared up within them.

The fact is that they had reached a specific historical stage where egoism was supposed to rise. It rose so sharply in all twenty-four thousand of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples that, instead of love, they immediately began relating to one another egoistically, which meant that they came to hate each other.

And the Temple was immediately destroyed. Otherwise, what would have remained of those bricks? Some kind of palace? Would people have taken paid tours there? What else would there have been? Nothing.

In other words, without an inner attitude, all this externality has no meaning. Therefore, it disappears from our world, is destroyed, and vanishes, because its spiritual root disappears. For this reason, there is nothing holy in this little hut (Sukkah) if your thoughts are not directed toward the spiritual.

The law is the law. No one asks about your intentions. A person may say, “I would like to; I would desire to; I have such intentions.” The world is judged not by our intentions, but by the degree of our inner correction.
[361986]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 9/24/26, Sitrin Convention, Sukkot 2003

The middle line, as such, does not exist. There is no such thing as a third entity. There are Creator’s properties, the right line, which manifests in relation to the creation, and there are properties of creation that are revealed to the creation itself, the left line.

The middle line, however, is a correction. It is the extent to which creation can correlate to the Creator. The Creator facilitates this by sending the light that returns to the source, the reforming light. Thus, a person who correctly balances both lines without adding or subtracting them merits the middle line. This middle line is called “man.”

The properties of the Creator and the properties of creation are not called “man”! Neither set of properties is us; they are two angels. Our bad qualities are not us, and the good qualities of the Creator that we perceive are not ours either. We are the preparation for the middle line, and we acquire the middle line later through our efforts.

We need to consider everything carefully: reward, punishment, effort, everything we go through. We should not work on changing our properties but on separating ourselves from the properties of the Creator and creation as if we were on the outside and working on both types of manifested properties called “do not add or take away.”

If a person is under the control of either the properties of the Creator or the properties of creation, he cannot create the conditions for the formation of a middle line. Conversely, he should see both properties—right and left—as two angels, two forces given to him equally from above. Man’s nature is also not his true nature. The right line is the Creator’s nature.

A person should not depend on or be attached to any line. So, the point in the heart is absolutely neutral between them. This is where it all begins. It is important not to become dependent on any of the lines because it will no longer be called a “man” but will simply be the nature of giving or receiving.

Work should always be only in the middle line even if I am just a point, the beginning of a point in the heart. But it is always between two lines—the right and left.

Neither line has anything to do with man. As it is written, “Go to the Master who made me” is the left line, and “There is none else besides Him” is the right line.
[360335]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/26, Rabash, “What Is Do Not Add and Do Not Take Away in the Work?”

What does personal freedom mean? Freedom from whom? Freedom from the Creator! Whether it is egoism or altruism does not matter; it is freedom from the Creator. He alone governs everything. So, this means freedom from Him.

What distinguishes a small spiritual level from a greater one, or an even higher one, and so on? It is the degree of independence from the Creator—from the Creator! It is when a person becomes equivalent to Him, autonomous, on par with Him.

When the Creator pulls us back and forth, up and down, gives us good and bad states, and drains all our life force from us, He is showing us how dependent we are on Him, suspended like a ball on a string that children play with.

In this way, He shows us the boundaries between our higher and lower states within which we should already be able to exist freely and independently of Him. In other words, He can drain all my energy, yet I can still rise independently to the highest level already allotted to me, that specific delta, those parameters. At the next level will be even higher, and so on.

In fact, there cannot be a state in which a person is completely under the Creator’s control. This is possible only as an example on the Creator’s side or as an uncorrected state on the person’s side. Therefore, there should be no room for gloom or any kind of defeatist attitude. The group must demand that each of its members deal with these states more quickly, because by remaining in them, he pulls the entire group backward.

The group must always kindle such a fire within itself that none of its members can calmly remain somewhere below and sink into spiritual depression.
[362261]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson for the holiday of Sukkot 10/1/26

From the perspective of the desire to receive, all commandments seem unimportant to us because a commandment is defined as an action for the sake of bestowal, where the entire intention is directed toward the benefit of the Creator or the benefit of another, someone external to what exists or will exist within the desire to receive.

Therefore, it does not matter whether it is directed for the sake of the Creator or for the sake of the group, a friend, or anyone else outside me. I do not sense any of this, and therefore, it is called unimportant. What is not felt within the desire to receive cannot be performed by a person, because a person is the desire to receive.

Therefore, naturally, a person is incapable of performing a commandment, an act directed toward bestowal. But if they acquire the power of Binah, the force of bestowal, the light of Hassadim, faith, the ability to act above reason, then to the extent of their correction, they can perform a commandment.

All 620 commandments are found on all 620 degrees. The difference between them is which part of the common desire to receive a person can perform an action upon for the sake of bestowal. In order to come to the performance of any commandment, one must first make a restriction upon themself so that they have no calculation connected with themself.

Rabash writes that if we gather all the pleasures that exist in this world, throughout all times, in all souls, in everything, they would amount to a mere dim illumination compared with the smallest spiritual pleasure. From this, we can understand the magnitude of the protective power against the desire to receive a person must acquire from above in order to perform an action not for the sake of the desire to receive, after having made a restriction upon it.

Of course, they have no such capabilities on their own, and they are not even capable of asking for this. It is simply that a calculation similar to the one that exists between parents and a child operates here. When the child cries, they give it everything it needs because they are inherently obligated to care for him.

Therefore, a small overcoming in the right direction is enough for us to receive help in response: the strength and the opportunity to advance toward the goal.
[360486]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/17/26, Rabash, “What Are Commandments that a Person Tramples with His Feet”